Hirasaki National Resource Center : Resources

Question and Answer Fact Sheet for
America's Concentration Camps:
Remembering The Japanese American Experience

WHAT IS THE EXHIBIT ABOUT?

America's Concentration Camps depicts a dark chapter in American history that too few know or understand: the mass incarceration of loyal Japanese Americans into barbed wire compounds surrounded by guards by their own government. It tells the episode through the words, photographs, home movies, artwork and artifacts of those who lived it. Silent and silenced for decades, they share difficult memories in the hopes that the more people learn about what happened, the less likely such an injustice will happen again to any other people.

WHY WERE JAPANESE AMERICANS PUT INTO CAMPS?

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans of Japanese ancestry were alleged to be threat to military security. However, these Americans had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, and there were no acts of espionage or sabotage ever uncovered then or since. Two-thirds of those incarcerated were American citizens by birth, their parents, not allowed to become citizens, had lived as permanent U.S. residents for the previous 20-40 years. In 1982, a committee appointed by the U.S. Congress concluded that the incarceration was carried out without adequate reasons of security and was motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a failure of political leadership.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ELLIS ISLAND?

The primary interpretive theme of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum is to tell the story of the millions of immigrants who came through this immigration center from 1892-1954. However, during World War II, Ellis Island was used as a detention and internment station. The exhibit, "America's Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience," relates to the use of Ellis Island as an internment site for some Japanese, German and Italian enemy aliens. It has been estimated that as many as 8,000 aliens spent time at Ellis Island between 1941-1945. Many of them were Japanese who, though living in the U.S. for decades, were forbidden by law to become citizens.

SINCE THE U.S. WAS ALSO AT WAR WITH GERMANY AND ITALY, WEREN'T AMERICANS OF GERMAN AND ITALIAN DESCENT PUT INTO CAMPS?

There were Germans and Italians who were interned for short periods of time but not en masse. The racial prejudice included rampant anti-Asian and specifically anti-Japanese sentiment since the turn of the century. For example, because of race, Japanese immigrants could not become naturalized citizens until 1952 unlike their European counterparts.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THEIR HOMES AND POSSESSIONS?

When they were forced from their homes Japanese Americans were told that they could bring only what they could carry. Some abandoned their property, many hurriedly sold possessions at great losses, a few were able to find non-Japanese American friends to care for their houses and businesses during the war. The financial losses were incalculable.

WHY WERE THEY CALLED CONCENTRATION CAMPS?

"Concentration Camps" was the term used by U.S. officials at the time: Congressman John Rankin said on December 15, 1941, "I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawai'i now and putting them in concentration camps." Attorney General Francis Biddle said on December 30, 1943, "The present procedure of keeping loyal American citizens in concentration camps on the basis of race for longer than is absolutely necessary is dangerous and repugnant to the principles of our government." It is also critical not to use the governmental euphemisms in order to understand the magnitude of the occurrence.

BUT DIDN'T THE GOVERNMENT ALSO CALL THEM RELOCATION CENTERS?

The U.S. government quickly shrouded the incarceration in euphemistic terminology to make the incarceration more acceptable. Even Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts declared on December 18, 1944, "An 'assembly center' was a euphemism for a prison... so-called 'relocation centers,' a euphemism for concentration camps." The detention orders were called "civilian exclusion orders," and American citizens were referred to as "non-aliens." This extensive and persistent use of euphemisms not only worked to sidetrack legal and constitutional challenges but, more insidiously, functioned to gain the cooperation of its victims as well as deceive the American and worldwide public.

DID THE U.S. GOVERNMENT EVER ADMIT THE CAMPS WERE WRONG?

Yes, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 signed into law by President Ronald Reagan acknowledged that the incarceration was a fundamental and grave injustice. "For these fundamental violations of the basic civil liberties and constitutional rights of these individuals of Japanese ancestry, the Congress apologizes on behalf of the Nation."